First, China’s emissions must decrease before Finland should do anything.
The statement repeated by climate critics is going down in history.
China is on the threshold of a major turning point.
Recent analysis: Emissions will decrease already next year
China has built and is building a huge amount of renewable energy this year, especially solar power.
So much has been created that the average growth in demand is now being exceeded for the first time.
If this pace continues, China’s emissions will turn to a structural decline already next year, i.e. at least a year or two ahead of even the most optimistic forecasts.
This is what the leading analyst of the international research institute CREA (Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air), which follows China’s energy breakthrough, says Lauri Myllyvirta.
Mill stream analysis China’s energy and emissions turnaround was published recently, and since then he has been interviewed by major international news media such as Reuters, Guardian, Bloomberg and Time.
– Solar power installations in particular have grown to enormous proportions this year. The increase in clean electricity corresponds to France’s entire electricity production this year, says Myllyvirta.
This year’s wild increase is turning emissions into a decrease next year, Myllyvirta calculates. If the pace continues wildly, it is possible that the decline will immediately become permanent.
– That would be a huge turnaround and extremely good news.
The significance of the turn is huge for the whole world
The growth of China’s emissions has been the main reason why the world’s emissions have not been reduced in recent years. China’s share of the entire world’s emission growth has been about two-thirds.
If the emissions turnaround really happens, its importance is enormous.
– When China’s emissions go down, the emissions of the whole world go down, says the professor of technical physics at Aalto University Peter Lund.
Lund is just packing his suitcase at home in Helsinki. At night, a flight to a lecture trip to China awaits.
Lund is a visiting professor at Nanjing University, which is surrounded by Jiangsu province, one of the country’s solar panel centers.
According to Lund, huge projects are not just about orders from central management. Of course, the central management directs, orders and supports financially, but the decisive decisions are made in the provinces.
– China is a very capitalist country. China is not run by giving orders from Beijing to the provinces, rather the provinces carry out their tasks very independently.
The new China is committed to breaking away from emissions
According to Lund, there are actually two Chinas: old China and new China.
Old China is burning coal and has taken over the production of goods in Europe as well – and emissions at the same time. Depending on the calculation method, 10–20 percent of China’s emissions come from the production of Western companies.
Traces are visible in the environment.
– The effects of climate change are already being seen seriously in China. There are huge floods and droughts, temperatures go over 40 degrees, says Lund.
– Every person can see it, and it is already causing huge financial losses.
In Lund’s words, New China does not “under any circumstances” want to be the world’s big factory to which Western countries outsource their production.
– In old China, the environment is perhaps a secondary factor. But in the new China, which wants innovation and know-how, the environment is strongly involved. When decisions are made, they are also considered in terms of the environment.
Only the sky is the limit, unless the sky falls on your neck
China’s state of will is so strong that it is only a matter of time before emissions turn to a permanent decrease, and the time is now counted in months.
There are two possible slowdowns: world political crises and China’s own energy struggles.
My own energy struggles are related to the decline of coal. In some parts of the country, coal is still an important source of employment, i.e. coal is also a regional political tool and in the hands of influential circles.
– This is definitely a matter of concern, and we are monitoring it closely. But clean energy now has so much political weight that there is a good chance that the interests of those who run coal-fired power plants will remain second, says CREA’s Lauri Myllyvirta.
The crisis-filled 2020s, on the other hand, have pushed people into a world full of warning signs.
The threat is new wars or an intensification of the trade war between the United States and China. They can bounce China’s open trader and busy installer of solar panels back into its shell.